Sorry snowboarders, but my snowboarding knowledge isn’t sufficient for specific recommendations for you, although much of this information is equally relevant for your sport as well as any other.

In no particular order we will look at;

1. The right kind of Fitness
2. What to do with your Hands
3. Controlling your speed and direction.
4. Using Imagery
5. Boots
6. How do you ski on Ice?
7. Use The Whole Ski
8. Plan Ahead
9. Rehydration
10. Confidence
11. Skis
12. Skiing Bumps

SKI TIP No1 

The right kind of fitness

Whatever your sport, this is crucial to optimum performance. All athletes need to train in a particular way as governed by the requirements of their sport. Whether you are an elite athlete, or a skier or boarder on a once a year holiday makes no difference, the outcomes will be the same if you don’t do it properly.

Take a good look at the things you need to do. What movements do you make, what is the range of motion in all of the various joints and muscles, how intense are these movements and how long do you do them for? This is called a “needs analysis” and before we do any training we need to carry this out if we want to get good results.

If we look at skiing, we can see that the majority of work is done by the legs, especially the thighs. Therefore, a good deal of attention should be paid to the Quadriceps (front of the thighs) in particular, but also to the Hamstrings (back of the thighs) and Gluteal (buttocks) muscles. Squats and lunges are ideal for this. In skiing, most of the movements are done through the middle section of a squat so particularly if you are lifting heavy weights, spend at least some of your time focusing on this area.

The better you are at skiing, the harder and faster you will need to make each movement. Especially if you are a good skier, make a point of doing squat jumps and lots of leaping and bounding movements. This will train your muscles to work powerfully and quickly in order to cope with the demands of skiing.

Think about how long you ski for in each run; typically this will be between 30 – 90 seconds, before you stop for a breather. This means that you should train for a similar amount of time before resting. Training like this will improve your body’s ability to cope with lactic acid build up, which is what causes the burning sensation in your thighs.

The other critical area to train is your central core. Core strength and stability is requires to maintain good posture and to facilitate the rapid changes of direction you will need to make. Pilates is a great way to train your core, it focuses on posture and stability of your spine and pelvis which will improve balance and believe it or not make your legs stronger too. Other things to work on are making quick changes of direction as you are running, using unstable bases such as Swiss Balls, the Bosu (The inflatable blue dome) wobble boards, or a trampet to perform all kinds of exercises.

If your core is not strong, when your skis change direction, your upper body will not be able to follow, so this area is a must, neglect it at your peril.

Mike Cowen

BASI Ski Instructor & Personal Trainer

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it